


Roundabouts in Poughkeepsie

by Vashti (tvashti)



Series: Fourth Dimension [7]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Eureka (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Girl Gang, Girl Power, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 03:16:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15110684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvashti/pseuds/Vashti
Summary: Willow didn't know she needed a girl gang until Security Chief Jo Lupo and Dr. Buffy Summers willingly step up on her behalf.





	Roundabouts in Poughkeepsie

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fandom fusion, leaning towards the Eureka side of things, post dimension hop. It would really, really help if you read the series from the beginning.

Jo and Dr. Summers ("call me Buffy") both winced as they watched the newest super-geek from IT fumble over herself in front of Dr. Bracksen. Neither woman could hear what was being said, but the body language could fill a four hundred page spec book.

"This is the woman they call 'The Wizard'?" Jo said, incredulity written on the face she turned toward Buffy.

"Tech wizard," Buffy said. "They said nothing about her social skills."

Jo snorted, turning back towards the drama playing itself out in the hallway beyond Buffy's test lab. The room was a certified bomb shelter due to the destructive nature of Buffy's research, otherwise they probably would have been able to hear the nasty words that went along with the sneer Bracksen was laying on "The Wizard".

The young redhead looked as if Bracksen had struck her until, suddenly, her work bag fell from her shoulder. She immediately dropped to the floor after it. Bracksen looked on. Said something. The Wizard, or what they could see of her, cringed.

Jo and Buffy both sucked in a sharp breath through their noses. "I am so ready to rip that guy a new one," Buffy said through clenched teeth.

"Right there with you, sister," Jo replied in kind. "What's her name?"

"Willow."

Jo looked at Buffy. “How do you want to handle this?”

“Brutally.”

“I can’t lay hands on a GD employee without just cause.” Before Buffy could argue for the justice of this cause, Jo said, “Which does not include belittling fellow GD employees. Unless I can prove that what has been said violates GD policy, and he resists my requests to leave the premises.”

Eyes narrowed and arms crossed over her chest, Buffy said, “He looks like a resister.”

“Doesn’t he just?”

“Come on. Let’s get out there so we can officially bag this guy.”

“Without violence,” Jo reminded her sister-in-arms.

Buffy looked up at her and batted her eyelashes. “I would never.”

“Does that look work on Dr. Osbourne?”

“What look?” Buffy batted her eyelashes again.

“Uh huh. Save the pretty princess act for Bracksen. I have a feeling he might actually buy it.”

“I am so counting on it.”

* * *

For Willow, the one saving grace of having to relive her entire school experience, with Dr. William Bracksen standing in for every childhood bully and sexist university professor, had been the complete lack of audience.

Of course there were other labs on this level. Lab space was precious at Global Dynamics. Nothing sat empty for long, even if technically there wasn’t anyone to fill it. Someone would figure out how to use the space.

At bupkis early in the morning, though, precious few of the scientists were in, and the ones who were in were asleep on their cots. Or in the cafeteria. Or at their desks. Or in the walls. Or _on_ the walls… The list of strange places where Willow had found napping scientists was already longer than she would have ever guessed possible, and she was still considered new in town.

She had also found out that sleeping scientists could be really hard to wake up. Sometimes that was a problematic, like when she needed to get Dr. Eope _off_ the equipment on her desk. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but the dark-skinned woman had been drooling, and it was shorting stuff out. Willow hadn’t even been going to that lab. The distinctly acrid smell of electrical smoke had caused her to stop and check it out.

Other times it was a godsend, like when Willow had discovered Dr. Thuy asleep in a hammock in a small, neat bedroom masquerading as a cramped closet. Of course, Willow had nearly had a heart-attack finding someone in there when all she’d wanted to do was store a spare hard drive until she could pick it up later. Without the scientist butting in every two seconds (it turned out Dr. Thuy was _very_ inquisitive, even by Willow’s chatty standards) the whole thing had taken less than hour so it was, mostly, worth it.

Dr. Bracksen was not a light sleeper. Nor was he a morning person. Or even a very nice one. Every one of her interactions with him made her feel like she was still a fuzzy-sweatered undergrad trying to prove to the boys that she was just as good as they were, even without dangly bits, before she’d learned how to stand up to them.

She hadn’t figured out how to stand up to Dr. Bracksen yet. This morning, though, was the first time her interactions with him made her feel physically ill.

Then Dr. Summer and Security Chief Lupo stepped out of a lab. From the looks on their faced they’d witnessed way more than Willow would have ever wanted. For the first time those niggling thoughts she had about leaving Eureka became serious.

After she’d stood up to her fellow classmates (aka, sexist bullies) as an undergrad, Willow had sworn to herself that she would never again allow herself to be made to feel like a little girl in pigtails. Living through it _twice_ had been awful enough. It wasn’t a cycle she wanted to get into: go to a new place, come under attack because she had a pair of boobs instead of balls, then squash said balls under the heel of her fun and functional footwear. One time had been nerve-wracking enough, thanks.

But now here she was, not only feeling like that little girl but thoroughly humiliated, too. Willow wished she hadn’t cut off half her hair the week before packing up her stuff and moving out to Oregon. Hiding behind that familiar red curtain would instantly make her feel a million times better.

Since he wasn’t low to the floor, it took Dr. Bracksen a moment to notice the two new bodies in the hall. He was all smiles and charm the moment he did, though, which made Willow’s insides smolder. How dare he pretend to not be a scummy scuzz ball as soon there was an audience? If he was going to be a jerk, he could at least have the decency to be one all the time.

Dr. Summers and Ms. Lupo stepped between Willow and Dr. Bracksen. “Good morning, Will!” Dr. Summers said in the chirpiest, perkiest voice Willow had ever heard come out of someone who wasn’t herself. It was so far removed from the scientist who, not a week before, had grumpily complained about needing her beauty sleep that Willow stopped picking up the contents of her bag from the floor. She couldn’t see Dr. Summers’ face, but her body was all but _beaming_ at Dr. Bracksen. Who soaked it up like she really was the sun.

Then again, he couldn’t see the clenched, white-knuckled fist she held behind her back. Willow slowly rose behind the trio, none of them seeming to pay her any mind.

“I didn’t know you were in your labs this early!” Dr. Summers chirped again, softly swaying on her feet.

Dr. Bracksen leaned towards her in turn. “I’m not. But I needed an IT tech and this ungodly hour was the only appointment I could get.”

“Oh…” Dr. Summers’ entire body pouted with her, while Willow watched in wide-eyed fascination. “That sounds like a real bummer.” As Willow had also never heard Dr. Summers sound anything like her Valley Girl name would imply, it was something of a struggle to keep her jaw from falling off her face and rolling across the floor.

Besides her, Ms. Lupo was shaking her head as if to agree that it _did_ sound like a real bummer, but the only person Dr. Bracksen had eyes for was Dr. Summers. “Tell me about it. And you know how they are?”

“How who are?” Dr. Summers asked in a tone of wide-eyed wonder.

“You know. IT. We’re a town full of super-geniuses. Why do we need an IT department?”

Dr. Summers shrugged in a way that reminds Willow of a cute little girl in a pinafore (not the kind who wore fuzzy sweater and got picked on). “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because Eureka scientists have a tendency to break things.”

“Expensive things,” Ms. Lupo added in a tone that was less friendly than her body language suggested it should be.

“Or try to hack the universe,” Dr. Summers said.

“Or the laws of physics,” Ms. Lupo said. Which drew a sharp glance from everyone in the hall. “Three weeks ago?”

Which got a collective, “Oh.”

“Buffy, have you also noticed that, somehow, when these things go wrong, our fair Eureka scientists have a tendency to want to hide,” Ms. Lupo said.

“I have!” It was just as perky, just as chirpy, but the bright shine had rubbed off somewhere. For the first time, Dr. Summers looked as gleefully dangerous as she had the night when she freed Willow from the guts of a thermocyclicautorotational machine with her own two hands. Tiny, yes. But dangerous.

Turning her full attention back on Dr. Bracksen, Dr. Summers said, “I wonder, William, what are you trying to hide from the best IT technical analyst Eureka has ever recruited?”

Willow turned her own attention from Dr. Summers to Dr. Bracksen, who seems to realize, for the first time, that he should be scared of the women in front of him.

Nodding, Ms. Lupo said, “You make a good point there, Buffy. You’re usually such a charming, sly little creeper, Dr. Bracksen. And our Wizard is right up your charming creeper alley. You’ve got quite reputation for making yourself, uh, _indispensable_ to the new female staff at GD. Especially the smart ones.”

“William,” Dr. Summers said, taking a step closer to Dr. Bracksen, “is it possible that you’re scared of The Wizard. Of whatever it is you’ve been hiding under that slicker-than-Teflon skin?”

Dr. Bracksen took a step back, hands held up defensively in front of him. “Hey!”

Three sets of eyes watch him with varying levels of predatory interest.

“Hey!” he said again. “I haven’t done anything!”

“They why are you running, Dr. Bracksen?” Willow says, speaking for the first time since the other two women appeared.

“I just…I…I…” He turned tail and actually did run.

Ms. Lupo pulled her phone out, only for Dr. Summers to stop her. “Please, please, _please_ let me call Oz. He’s been working on one of Taggert's old projects. Dogs that track people by scent.”

“Buffy, all dogs track things by scent.”

“These are supposed to be able to sniff out things like guilt.”

Willow watched the interplay as Ms. Lupo seemed to consider it. “Maybe some other time, but I don’t want to give him time to clear out his office. It’ll be quicker to have some of my people strong arm him until Carter can get here.”

Buffy sighed. “Okay, fine. I still think it would have worked.”

“Do you have any idea how many people in this building are guilty of _something_. Those poor dogs would collapse trying to chase them all down. And you,” Ms. Lupo said, turning to look at Willow for the first time. “How are you doing?”

“Um…pretty good actually.” She smiled at both women, and felt it grow. “Really good.”

Dr. Summers was also looking at her and smiling. “You don’t mind that we jumped in, do you?”

“No! Are you kidding me? I wish there had been more women in my undergrad classes so we could have banded together like that. It was kinda amazing. Thank you both, _so_ much!”

Dr. Summers shrugged. “No big.”

“Yeah, what she said.” Ms. Lupo’s smile was smaller, but no less genuine. “So now that the fun stuff is over, let’s get moving.”

Willow frowns. “Get moving where?”

“You, to a computer so you can track down whatever that sleaze has been hiding. I’ve been wanting to nail him for something for months! And me, to go meet Carter so I can rub it in his face that I bagged Bracksen before he did.”

“And me to grab some coffee,” Dr. Summers moaned. “It is too early for all this girl power.”

Fin[ite]


End file.
